


This Must Be the Morning

by magicites



Category: Kamen Rider OOO
Genre: Drabble Collection, Non-Explicit Sex, Other, Post-Canon, like the artsiest most non-explicit sexual content you will ever read
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-22
Updated: 2018-01-22
Packaged: 2019-03-08 06:13:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13452222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magicites/pseuds/magicites
Summary: It's tough, trying to navigate this strange, new relationship Hina, Eiji, and Ankh find themselves in after spending so long apart. There's so much to catch up on, so many seemingly impossible things to learn.Things aren't always okay, but they can puzzle life out one step at a time. Together.





	This Must Be the Morning

**Author's Note:**

> Me, circa January 2014: "im fucked up over bird monsters"
> 
> Me, circa January 2018: "i went to the toei entertainment theme park while in japan and began to cry when i saw a poster of the new kamen rider movie that had ankh on it, so obviously nothing has changed"
> 
> A few years back (I can't believe I can actually say that, I feel so old...) I had an idea for a drabble series set after canon where each chapter is centered on a resurrected Ankh learning how to navigate this strange thing called life and these strange things called emotions. I found the docs a few weeks ago and while the majority of them are way more depressing than I originally thought while writing them, there are a few salvageable ones that I'd like to put up here.
> 
> What you're about to read is not actually one of those at all, but a product of me being Fucked Up Over Bird Monsters™ in 2018. Mostly I used it as a challenge in actually editing the things I write and not just proofreading, but hey! Semantics. 
> 
> If you've read my other OOO fic and want to think of this as a sequel, that is perfectly legitimate. Enjoy!

A month after reuniting, they fall into bed together.

Maybe Hina should have seen this coming. Isn’t this a natural progression of the tension brewing between them, a roaring inferno brought to life from the meager embers sown much too long ago? The logical conclusion of a bond that only solidified a few weeks before she and Eiji lost Ankh for four long, lonely years? She’s felt _something_ \- a dash of melancholy, a drop of loss, an entire heart full of longing - buried within her since the day he left, but it came racing to the surface when he finally returned.

That _something_ hung thick and heavy in the air the first time Ankh had opened his eyes on that terrible hybrid of a lab station and an operating table, eyes that were no longer twisted, stolen parodies of ones she loved, but eyes that only he could lay claim to. He has always been a creature wrought from flames, but when his gaze - red as the ruby in his wings, entirely new but wholly _right_ \- settled on her and Eiji, there was a distinct heat meant just for them.

Hina has known a similar heat only once before, on a cruelly hot and humid August day after Eiji was forced to take his world-wide quest to restore Ankh back to Japan. He didn’t want to come back, but the Kougami Foundation’s main branch had found a possible lead on recreating the Core Medals. Maybe. The chemists who made the breakthrough were located at a top-tier research institute in Osaka. They had made strides forward thanks to a few precious fragments of other shattered Core Medals the Foundation miraculously ( _mysteriously_ ) recovered, but they needed something more substantial to test before they could confirm their theory, they said.

_The broken Taka medal would be the final key to unlocking this mystery. Please let us study it_ , they asked, pleading through overly professional emails sent to both Eiji and Hina, as if they didn’t know Eiji kept both halves of Ankh’s medal with him throughout his travels.

But they both agreed, and Hina waited two hours in the airport to try to see Eiji. She didn’t want much, just to catch a glimpse of him in the flesh and not over a grainy video screen; maybe a hug too, if he could spare the time for one.

Luck was not on their side. Eiji’s flight into Tokyo was horribly delayed, leaving his feet to barely touch the grounds of Tokyo before he had to rush onto a plane bound for Osaka. There was no time for him to fight his way to where she waited.

She had left the airport with a sullen heart, her disappointment simmering in the humid afternoon heat.

The weather was even worse when Hina returned three days later. Seeing Eiji’s familiar silhouette was the only thing that could bring her to ignore the drying sweat along her hairline and the way her dress clung uncomfortably to her back.

He was here.

He was home.

She had rushed towards him, towards her dearest friend, her family, a man who she would sacrifice anything and everything for time and time again.

The man who met her in that airport had a kind smile on his face and an emptiness in his eyes that told her everything she could have possibly asked.

Another failure.

Another glimmer of hope, destroyed.

Hina had wrapped Eiji in a tight hug, but loosened her grip and added a hasty apology when she felt him wheeze against her. Even after he had regained his breath, his chest still heaved with an effort born from months of constant exhaustion. Of course he had pushed himself too far, tired himself out until he straddled the border of destitution.

But he was finally home, and Hina was there to shoulder his burden. If she could reach him, then she would, and she’d pull him back time and time again from the frayed edges of suffering that drew him like a magnet. Maybe that was why when she pulled away, he pressed half of Ankh’s shattered core into her palm.

“He gave this to you,” Eiji had said. “You should keep it for now.”

The oppressive mugginess of the Tokyo summer greeted them as they left the airport side-by-side. Immediately a sweat broke across Hina’s brow; a quick glance revealed that Eiji shared her fate. He pulled at the neck of his shirt as a short sigh escaped him.

Hina’s fist stayed closed around Ankh’s medal, his broken Core freezing against her skin. What should have been a welcome relief from the heat instead felt like frostbite.

He always ran warm whenever she touched him.

(Fate had a cruel sense of humor sometimes.)

She and Eiji had tried to find comfort in each other that night, curled on a dusty bed in the empty apartment that Eiji promised would be theirs one day, once he made things right. Once he brought Ankh back. Anytime Eiji found himself sparing a precious few days in Tokyo, he stayed in that barren apartment, completely alone.

Hina no longer remembers who initiated that first kiss - Hina’s first kiss; Eiji’s first kiss since he had met her, as he would tell her months later. She had always wondered what it would feel like to have someone’s lips pressed against hers, to share another’s breath. Would her heart pound? Would electricity race down her spine? Would she feel fireworks go off within her chest?

It was everything she had imagined and more, better than the fantasies that Hina only allowed herself to entertain when she balanced on the edge of sleep and the waking world early in the morning. She tried to lose herself in his warmth just as he tried to forget his failures (failures that never were, demons from his past disguised in new forms, lies sheathed in different words but just as grotesque) in her’s. Skin met skin and Eiji’s mouth brushed against her shoulders, ghosting over the slopes of her body as if whispering a prayer.

Maybe he was. To who or what, she couldn’t fathom. 

(The only god he had ever believed in was himself, however brief his tenure was.)

But gods were far from Hina’s mind when Eiji looked at her the way he did back then, like every atom in his body sung out for hers. He was gentle, cautious fingertips splayed across her waist, feather-light touches on her hips as she perched herself carefully over the tops of his thighs.

Only their underwear remained, outer layers long since shed and discarded on the floor around the futon. All Hina had left on was the pale blue satin bra-and-panty-set she had bought on a whim a few months back. No one had ever seen her reveal this much skin before -- even in high school, she hid in the shadows of the locker room to change, too insecure about her body to go under the harsh lights and the harsher stares of the other girls. But she felt safe (and she felt _beautiful_ ) with Eiji, enjoying the pleasant shivers that raced down her back as his fingertips played with the small bows where the cups of her bra met the straps.

The pink-and-green boxers that she balanced above were more familiar than they had any right to be. They were an old favorite of Eiji’s; she recognized them from the days when she still measured time by how long it had been since she last had to tend to his wounds.

She was used to seeing him bruised and bloody, gasping for air as the purple Cores emptied him from within. But she had never seen him like _this_ , skin flushed across his face and chest, panting for air like he was trying to drink her in, eyes alight with a heat that burned like wildfire, swirling through her skin and coiling deep in her core.

But even then, Eiji treated her like spun glass, handling her like she would shatter at the slightest touch. She had never been broken the way he had, and yet he acted as if she was the one who needed someone to string her back together. Like she wasn’t always waiting there with her hand outstretched, praying for him to grab on and, just for once, not leave himself to suffer alone.

Ankh had never seen Hina that way. After contempt gave way to trust, when he almost lost himself to another half that was never meant to exist, she was the one who held onto his final piece. Who he trusted to keep him safe when all else failed, who he trusted enough to tell when his Core cracked and his life began to slip through his fingers.

“We shouldn’t do this,” Hina had said.

Eiji had stuttered out a confused noise, the intensity he radiated just moments before fading to almost nothing. His eyes followed hers to the Medal on the table, the two halves carefully placed there for safekeeping.

“I-I’m sorry,” he had replied quickly, scrambling for the blanket and pulling it up around them as Hina moved to sit by his side. His hands stayed a considerable distance away from her as his eyes darted between Hina and Ankh’s medal once more.

“No, it’s okay. I don’t think…” she had paused, rolling potential words around in her mouth, cautiously testing each phrase to find the one that would hurt him the least.

This time, her eyes followed Eiji’s to what laid upon the small table.

“...Not yet,” was what she had decided upon, chancing a look at Eiji himself. Any trace of desire was gone, overshadowed by the heavy weight of guilt and dampened by understanding.

It wasn’t that she hadn’t wanted it - she had, and she still did, with a yearning that rang somewhere deep within her. It wasn’t that she had any personal qualms with intimacy, especially not with someone whom she loved so dearly - and yes, she knew that love was the only word that could ever hope to explain how she felt about the man sitting next to her. They had never talked about their relationship before, and though it wasn’t much, Hina had always been more honest with her emotions than he ever was.

But how could they talk about their relationship, when it felt so incomplete?

Hina held two different hands the night before it all ended, and she could save this moment for the tomorrow she knew would come.

That tomorrow is here, in this once-barren apartment that now holds two vibrant and beautiful lives, with hers poised to join in a few impossibly long weeks. Her belongings are still in her brother’s apartment, but her heart has settled down here, nestled with the small, unlikely family that she never knew could make her feel such joy until the pieces fell wonderfully into place.

Hina has never had anyone like Eiji and Ankh before, nor has she ever loved anyone like she loves them.

(Nor does she ever want to love anyone like she loves them.)

Hina, Eiji, and Ankh are all currently squeezed together on a couch that was most likely not made with the intention of fitting three adults on it, a blanket draped over their shoulders like a massive shawl in an attempt to withstand the chilly night air. Discarded wrappers litter the ground by Eiji’s feet, a small testament - made entirely of crinkled plastic - to the sheer amount of convenience store food that now settles comfortably within their stomachs. Eiji owns a trash can, but it’s in the kitchen, and throwing away the trash means braving the cold.

Ankh does what Ankh does best: ignore Eiji’s suggestion as to what to do next by scrolling through his phone, a half-eaten popsicle dangling from his free hand. Hina stays quiet, mentally running through a list of possible activities they could do without sparking too extreme of an argument between any of them.

Eiji continues to prod Ankh, the finger insistently poking into Ankh’s side coupled with loud questions asked through a silly grin. Ankh scowls, but doesn’t respond until after he’s taken the last bite of his popsicle, tossing the wrapper and stick to sit atop the mound.

Hina moves to get up, finally willing to brave the cold now that there’s nothing else to throw away. When she gets to her feet, a hand wraps around her own. She knows it’s Ankh - Eiji is too far away to reach her, at least not without sprawling himself over Ankh, an action that surely would have sparked a fight she’d have noticed by now - but that knowledge does nothing to reduce the surprise that blooms within her.

(There is a jolt of electricity, too. He is so warm. His touch is intoxicating and she will gladly drink him in.)

“Where do you think you’re going?” he asks.

“To throw away the trash?”

Ankh’s expression settles back into a familiar scowl, though he wears it less often these days. As silly as it is, the familiarity of it sends a rush of affection through her. It is another reminder that he is here. He is real.

He is himself.

“It’s not going anywhere. Do it later,” he says, tugging her hand and pulling her back down to her seat, shifting just enough that her body slots neatly and easily against his. She shares his warmth in a long line from shoulder to hip.

Her first reaction is to let her irritation reign supreme, to scold him and do it anyways. At this point, it isn’t just about cleaning up; it’s also about defying whatever authority he thinks he has over her.

Her second reaction is slightly delayed, settling in after the realization that he isn’t telling her not to go to control her. He simply doesn’t want her to leave. He won’t say it out loud (he may never), but oh, she feels this truth deep in her bones.

_He loves me._

That thought is the driving force behind Hina’s second reaction, the one spurs her to action. She leans even further into him and presses her lips to his with all the gentleness she can muster. The last thing she wants is to push too hard and hurt him. Not here.

He’s suffered enough hurt, hasn’t he? Haven’t they all?

Don’t they all deserve a reprieve? 

He doesn’t reciprocate so much as silently allow it. When she pulls back, face red from shame, she catches Eiji’s wary stare from over Ankh’s shoulder. He is ready to jump in and separate them, if need be. There’s really no need for his worry.

Hina has kissed both of them, several times, in several places. She tends towards small pecks on the cheek, simple acts of affection that she carries out with the confidence that they cannot be rebuffed. Those are innocent. Safe. Easy.

The night Eiji returned with what he hesitantly hoped would be the true key to reviving Ankh, Hina kissed the crown of his head and held him close. He chuckled as he told her that he was scared, still trying to protect her even in his own vulnerability. She kissed his forehead, his temple, his cheek, each a silent promise that regardless of the outcome, he had not failed. He had not kissed her back, but the way his fingers clutched a little more tightly at the fabric of her dress was the only encouragement she needed.

Hina primarily resigns herself to holding Ankh’s hand or curling into his side when she feels particularly brave, too afraid of scaring him away to try much else. On very rare occasions she’ll balance herself on the tips of her toes and press her lips against the tip of his nose, never able to stifle a giggle at the cute way he crinkles his nose once he realizes what she’s done. Sometimes he’ll brush it off, but she treasures the rare, beautiful times when his gaze softens just the slightest bit afterwards.

They - the three of them - rarely share a real kiss. But they have kissed, just once, after Ankh first revived.

Ankh revived the same way Hina imagined someone would burst out from underneath a sheet of icy water. His eyes flew open and he took a deep, gasping breath, panting as if he had forgotten what it was like to have air. (For all she knew, he may have.)

There was nothing slow about the way he swung his legs - distinctly human legs, though the more Hina looked at him, the more she noticed a distinctly inhuman quality about him - off the table and stood up. It didn’t take long for his sharp gaze to fall on herself and Eiji, just as it didn’t take long for him to stalk towards them.

Ankh had grabbed Eiji and shouted at his grinning, teary-eyed face in furious disbelief that Eiji ever thought he was alone. How could he have failed Ankh when Ankh was the one who chose to sacrifice himself in the first place? He curled his hands into Eiji’s shirt and yanked him forward. No one, least of all Eiji, expected the rough, angry kiss that followed.

When they separated, Ankh left a dazed Eiji behind as he stalked over to Hina, grabbed her by the forearms, and pulled her towards him. She knew what his malice felt like, having been on the receiving end of it back in the distant past when she somehow thought of him as nothing more than a monster. The person that now brought her close was nowhere near a monster. Though his touch was rough, it spoke only of the fondness he had developed for her during their time together. He kissed her like he missed her, like the only way to claim his stake on humanity was to memorize hers with a ferocity that only he could summon.

Despite anything Ankh might have said otherwise, he cared. The way he held her made her think that the world could have crumbled to dust around them and it wouldn’t have mattered in the slightest. He would have let it fall, provided she was still there in the end.

Now, she catches Ankh’s eye, and a very similar thought emerges.

He looks at her like he’d let the world burn down to nothing as long as she still stood above the ashes.

She is prepared when he surges forward and kisses her, setting every nerve in her body alight, a trail of fireflies dancing a glowing trail along the curve of her spine. He is different from Eiji, pushing forward when Eiji pulls back, but amazing all the same. 

He tastes like the popsicle he just ate, sweet on her tongue.

Her touches are especially careful, cradling him like silk as she threads her arms behind his neck and smiles into his mouth. Her fingers dance along his skin, tapping out the notes to a song she used to hear in television ads that always made her think of him. A sweeping, dramatic song about bright skies and flying so high that the world below just becomes an afterthought to ignore. Beautiful, daring.

Free.

She didn’t know how badly she wanted this until she had it, and now her entire being hums with a single thought: _more_. So she kisses him a little more deeply, pushes a little further, and beautifully he opens up for her.

When they break apart, it’s only so Hina can force air back into her lungs. Ankh trails a few kisses along her jawline and down her neck before pulling back. The intense heat in his gaze has only grown stronger. He watches her like he would never let her go even if given the chance.

A thrill goes down her spine, and she feels safer than she’s ever been before.

He wants her, and she wants him.

But then she spots Eiji, his previous wariness replaced by a face redder than she thought possible and a gaping mouth, and bursts into giggles.

Ankh scoffs and throws himself back into the couch, clearly frustrated by the break in their rhythm. Hina kisses him once more, a lingering promise of affection more than anything else, as she moves past him. For the sake of his pride, she’ll never bring up the way he trailed after her - just a few centimeters, just enough to mean something even if he didn’t realize what he was doing - but she will hold this new picture close to her heart forever.

Likewise, she will always treasure the moment when Eiji melts for her as she kisses him. The barrier that stopped them two years ago has dissolved, the emptiness that once hid within him no longer so cavernous. Doubt cannot pierce them here.

When they break apart, Eiji grins at her, a little bashful, a little sheepish, and overwhelmingly happy. The tops of his cheeks are flushed a brilliant red as he asks, “Can we take this somewhere else? There’s, um, not much room on this couch.” He breathes out a short giggle and brushes his fingers along her arm, making her heart thud in her chest and her stomach swoop low.

Hina nods and slides off the couch to follow Eiji, but stops when she notices that Ankh has yet to move. He scowls at nothing in particular; when he notices Hina looking at him, he rolls his eyes and scoffs. As much as she’d love to compare him to a cat thrown into a bath, the slight puff to his chest is distinctly avian. He is nothing if not ridiculous.

Hina slides her hands into his and easily pulls him off the couch. “You’re coming too,” she says, laughter bubbling in her voice as he stumbles into her side.

There are two bedrooms: one for Eiji, and one for Ankh. Hina has only seen Ankh’s room once, but the lofted bed and window that seems eternally open shine vividly in her mind’s eye. Eiji leads them to his own bedroom, though the differences between the rumpled bedsheets on each half of the bed betray the fact that this isn’t _only_ Eiji’s room.

Eiji toes the door shut behind them, pausing long enough for an awkward silence to settle over the room. How fitting is it that they stand here, each cradling the same desire, and yet none of them are able to voice it?

Isn’t this so silly - aren’t they all silly, for withholding themselves from each other after dreaming of the day they would be reunited for so long? 

That’s enough of that. Still holding Ankh’s hand, a small fire cradled in her palm, she takes one of Eiji’s hands in her free one and leads them both towards the bed. Silently, but with a small smile, she sinks down onto the mattress and pulls them both closer as gently as possible.

It gets easier from there. Inexperience and nervousness do nothing to mar their enthusiasm. Hina gladly surges forward, not because she knows what to do (quite the opposite, actually) but because the void that once held her back, that chasm yawning out between her and Eiji before this apartment knew what it truly meant to hold life within it, has been wonderfully filled. Her body feels light, taking solace in this place now so free of guilt. There is nothing to fear, nothing they need to worry about. The chains of life that drag them down are no longer welcome. Not here.

Eiji is the only one with any experience, and he guides them to the best of his ability, drawing from old memories of nighttime lovers and flings that fizzled to life and then faded out like fireworks in the night sky. Even then, he only has experience with how two people come together, not three.

There are so many limbs with seemingly nowhere to go.

Still, they manage to find each other, to connect through touches that burn like fire in winter and kisses that shock like lightning. Ankh ends up in between them, with Eiji pressing biting kisses that’ll surely bloom into marks in the morning into his shoulders and Hina tracing her hands over musculature that isn’t quite human, but isn’t quite not. He is something else entirely, a mosaic unlike anything other, something beautiful and new and _hers_.

There is warmth against their skin, and heat pooling within their bodies. Breaths dance together in the chilly night air. There are eager hands and eager mouths and eager movements that accidentally fling someone onto the floor more than once.

But most of all, there is affection, there is care, and there is trust, brought to the surface by this intimacy unlike any other. They come undone for each other, pulling apart at the seams in a way that makes Hina think that, for as long as she lives, she never wants to share these moments with anyone but them.

When they are finally spent and pleasantly exhausted, Hina finds herself pressed into the middle between their two sides of the bed, between her two loves. Eiji presses a sleepy kiss to her mouth before drifting off, his soft snores filling the quiet of the room.

Ankh is at her other side, his phone somehow in his hands despite no longer having any pockets from which to pull it out of. She settles into his side and pillows her head on his shoulder, content to watch his expression morph and shift in response to whatever plays out on the tiny screen in front of him. One hand leaves his phone and she finds it stroking her hair, heated fingertips ghosting against her bare chest. It is a gesture of possession, one that makes her smile against his skin.

She is theirs, and they are hers, and finally the world feels as if it has settled into place.


End file.
